Vandals caused extensive damage early Sunday to both the Crow Museum of Asian Art and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in downtown Dallas. They also spray-painted graffiti and shattered a window at the Nasher Sculpture Center.
On a night of looting and vandalism that extended to the city’s cultural exhibit spaces, only the nearby Dallas Museum of Art remained unscathed.
The vandalism followed a second day of protests over the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody after a white officer pinned him to the ground with a knee to his neck.
Each museum had formulated plans to reopen in the coming weeks after being closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. But now, said Crow director Amy Lewis Hofland, “we have new plans.”
Hofland said the attack on the Crow began around midnight, when people picked up chairs provided for outdoor seating and used them to break 10 windows. She said two more windows had bullet holes and another was broken by rocks, which left gaping cavities near the museum’s Flora Street entrance.
The Crow has yet to calculate the dollar amount of the damage, Hofland said, noting that security has been enhanced, with the Crow and other nearby buildings being hastily boarded up.
“A majority of our windows were smashed on Flora Street, but the collection is safe,” she said.
Assailants did invade the Lotus Shop, the museum gift store, where, Hofland said, they engaged in a spree of ransacking and rock-throwing.
Security and Dallas police responded almost immediately, she said. No arrests were reported. The museum and local investigators will pore over security footage, which Hofland said was extensive.
Nearby, at the southern edge of Victory Park, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science was also vandalized, prompting this statement from the museum on Sunday afternoon:
“Our nation is hurting. That is first and foremost on the minds of all of us at the Perot Museum. That said, we can confirm that during the night of May 31, 2020, the museum was vandalized. Windows and a door on the Field Street side were broken, and the plaza doors also were damaged. We suffered some additional property damage, but no injuries have been reported."
An unoccupied security vehicle parked in the museum’s extended parking lot was set on fire around 7:40 p.m., but the flames were soon extinguished by authorities.
The statement added that Perot officials are "working closely with the Dallas Police Department to continue monitoring the building, and we do not anticipate any adverse impact to our plans” to reopen later this summer.
Six-tenths of a mile away, in the Dallas Arts District, the damage at the Nasher was mild compared to that at the Crow and Perot, external affairs director Jill Magnuson said.
The Dallas Museum of Art had no damage, said spokeswoman Jill Bernstein. Yet, it and the other museums were boarded up Sunday morning to ward off further attacks.
One of the lingering effects of the downtown blitz is that it adds yet another layer to an already severe crisis.
The pandemic was one thing. A night of crime was utterly unexpected. But for arts institutions suffering mounting economic woes, the weekend did nothing to make recovery easier.
The DMA and the Perot have not reopened since being closed in mid-March, but the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Houston Museum of Natural Science have reopened in recent days.
“We are working through various reopening scenarios,” Bernstein said about the DMA.
Magnuson at the Nasher said, “We are still evaluating our reopening.”
“We,” Hofland said, “have a lot of work to do.”
The Meyerson Symphony Center and the AT&T Performing Arts Center, which includes the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre, had no damage. Outdoor furniture was moved inside on Sunday morning to discourage any vandals.
